A look at what's going on in Trinidad, on H Street, and in the larger area north of Capitol Hill.

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Sunday, September 28, 2014

Photos From Art All Night

I wanted to share some of my photos from last night's late night art event Art All Night. It's a large scale event that started in Shaw, but has now expanded to include five District neighborhoods, including H Street. I didn't make it to all of the H Street/Trinidad area attractions (ok, I hit about half of them), but I saw most of the stuff on the Eastern end. Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of what went on. You can find my full photo set here. One thing I noticed is that some venues started later than scheduled, and others seemed to shut down early. I'm going to chalk some of the organizational snafus up to the fact that this is the first time we've had Art All Night in this neighborhood. It also sounds like many folks didn't hear about Art All Night until it was too late, so more publicity would probably be a good thing. Hopefully we can improve on these things for next year, because this really was a fun event.
The Starburst Plaza was pretty hopping by the time I showed up (around 7:30pm). I couldn't find the "art market" listed on the map, but I was later directed towards a man selling t-shirts at a booth. At any rate, there was a good sized crowd that seemed to be having fun. Unlike many events that ran until 3am, this one wrapped up early (11pm). A certain ANC Commissioner from Carver-Terrace objected to music and dancing running later.

Over at the Cutlass and Cane pop up (Flats at Atlas, 1600 Maryland Ave) they had live music, drinks for purchase, and a fashion show. I also saw a buffet, but it wasn't set up while I was there.

Up the street, Jimmy Valentine's (1103 Bladensburg Road) had the normal wall art and murals, plus a dj (went on at 10pm, so not pictured).

Gallery O/H (1354 H Street) had a photo/history exhibit from the Washington Informer, as well as work from Albus Cavus, and live music.

Ben's Chili Bowl (1001 H Street) had an open house with live music and sampling, but it appeared to have wrapped by the time I passed by.

9 comments:

What I liked about Art All Night is that it gave me a reason to check out a few local spots - Bardo, Jimmy Valentine's - that I hadn't yet visited. I could see Bardo being a great place to take friends for a lazy weekend afternoon. Plus, it was great to meet and hang out with you for the first time, Ms. Frozen Tropics!

yeah the publicity from the Art All Night folks was pretty bad. I tried to follow it over the past few weeks through their website and keep on seeing the message "check back for more updates on events" or something like that. I didn't go to the other neighborhoods, but it looks like Dupont had the majority of the other events

I went to everything on H. It was okay nothing too spectacular, but it brought people into the neighborhood. I am also a fine arts kind of guy.

@ Simon, what is inked like? Is she hot? I always suspected she might be.

The event pretty much a hot mess but it does have promise. A few things I noticed:

The materials they were handing out highlighted that this was an "H Street/Bladensburg"event which is the first time I've seen Bladensburg Road billed like this.

The program listed WAY more events than actually transpired. The starburst intersection stage had only one act of a promised half dozen or so and shut down five hours before it was slated to. The program said you could tour the new Ben's Chili Bowl but after walking all the way down there we found nothing happening.

The Starburst Plaza is an AWESOME location for a stage. I hope we see more of this.

The live band at Bardo was the best. I hope they have more live music!

I follow local news extremely closely and I had absolutely no idea that this was happening until I saw the spotlights.